(Bubberts Awards 2013 Entry)

She rose early from a sleepless sleep

The high TUH-duh TUH-duh of the road grooves keeps her risen

Perpendicular, the waterless creeks of eastern Colorado

Parallel, the broken deer with the country road highways

Disappearing color of the landscape made more so by continents of ashen snow

Telephone lines follow like foamy limping waves.

The drowsy chins of the leading passengers pull their Ellington-filled heads down

                        Leisurely

She wants to shave the wisps of hair budding above their collars

Driver’s eyes shift mirror road mirror road

Hers revisit the colorless ocean.

You pass an invisible wall,

you begin to snicker and sneer

You judge me.

You make me your victim.

You cannot know where I’ve been

or what trials I have gone through

nor my joys.

And I do not know yours.

I cannot judge you back

though it would be so easy,

though I desperately want to.

You make me your victim,

but you were victims first,

although I cannot know to what.

This bonds us.  

We are akin in this way,

victims to one another,

To prejudice, insecurity, pride

The list is infinite.

But we are victims, you and I.

This doesn’t make you easier to forgive,

nor me easier to like.

This does not cripple us,

Nor empower us.

Neither does this make us the same.

Those who say,

     “We’re all the same”

  are liars.

We are not all the same, you and I,

but we are also not all

              different.

The sun shone on Monday morn
in strands of flaxen memory.

Out past the horizon sat a visage,
its magnificence sifted through the atmosphere,
but those minuscule collisions resulted
in splendor unrequited.

The gentle warmth of lips shifting
into smiles a million miles away
lifted midnight mists,
weekend haze cut into
static fragments
by moments of focus.

We play our celestial parts,
bodies revolving in and out of
eclipses, simply wishing for
the bliss of glimpses.

This life is but a struggle
through ellipses into
…
periods of certainty.

Listen, child!
Do you hear it?
Of course not. There was little hope that you
would ever hear and know – listen.
For you run about all day chasing monsters and
digging in the dirt
with a playmate no one sees.
How does one put
to paper a thing silent in nature? How does
one imagine the imaginary friend to look?
This is the trouble
with the ineffable. Yet
the instrument – language – is
not the problem. Listen, child!
Your playmate has scampered off with the monsters and now
you are left to the inexpressible.
Hush now.
Ms. Dickinson will be along shortly.

Stuck in orbit around this place
It never decays
always mere miles
from the flowing shadow pit
of melancholy and mediocrity

Sheer exudes from its centre
And this one can hold
Even the idea of escape velocity gets sucked
towards the hostile maelstrom
it creates

Now sitting at the edge of space and reason
I watch like a shamed voyeur
at the things left undone
A great unwinding is happening
and I am doing nothing
to stop the pulling of chords

I should want to leave
want to forge a way out
want something more
But I don’t
and that unsettles me
more than the constant pull of apathy

Silver begets Bronze

just as mother births child;

a cycle continues,

staying the same and yet changing everything.

Whimsical fantasy shifts into gritty noir

that taint everything with a realism

not yet experienced in this day and age.

A legacy is dirtied, a hero dissloved,

and respect for the future

becomes preposterous.

A beacon emerges

flooding existence with its emerald, ethereal glow

and thunderous lightening applauds its coming

Icons from the past usurp the darkness

that simplicity and innocence still have a place.

Heroes made, Heroes, died, and Heroes reborn

Forever a cycle of continuity.

She listens for his motions, attentively,

but does not hear for the blare of the television.

It’s switched on

the couch

she’s nestled in the crook.

As a little girl

I listened closely as well,

but now I have seen

the things that men can do.

I feel the fear

that salted her trembling lips.

I only wanted someone to love, she tells me.

Can I climb my way out?

The voice-over keeping on

from the television

blares.

She dreams of cotton sensuality,

the kisses of gauzy puff

on her pink skin.

Oh, she squeals, I want that life!

She is the flower,

the television blares.

She is stillness

nestled

between couch cushions.

Her breath catches in her throat

when the small sounds

of his entering and exiting

blur

sadly swirling,

obscured by white noise about

Wedding dresses,

Sensuous white roses

Caressing the sweet hollow of her neck.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for him to come back.

She is the flower,

the television blares.

A sweet secret

taken from her, this freedom

even I would want to unlock

and keep for her.

She is the flower,

the television blares.

Backfired
We have some problems
Real life, fucked up, serious ones.

Actually, fucking tons.

Is it our culture?
Is it our government?
Is it our military?
Seriously, what is it?
Because I don’t understand.
My mind is incapable of comprehension
I can find no sense.

The killing, the innocent,
Death doesn’t ruin only the defiled.
Hitting that point,
it ruins society.

Perhaps we encourage it.
Or maybe we just don’t challenge it.
We live, expecting shit to fix itself.

Maybe the problem isn’t the system
or our culture
or the media
or the world.

Maybe
it’s just
you and me.

Checking Facebook or some other shallow mean
to see what’s up
instead of talking face to face
over nothing much.

Disconnecting over a wifi connection
Getting lost in a sea of contacts
Misinterpreting through a message, a chat.

Some things just can’t be said
without the feel of human contact.

We hate.
We isolate.

We
are
terrible.

And beautiful.

We fight for each other, or at least should.
That’s what keeps the balance.

This is not the problem of one, two, three, five, eight people.
It’s a problem of intolerance
a lack of caring
a lack of passion
a laziness
a cynicism.

We are our own worst enemy
and really, do we have anyone else to blame?
Are we born evil?
No.
People are what we make them.

Everything we’ve done so far
seems to have backfired.

We need to change.

(Bubbert Awards 2013 entry)